Thursday, January 29, 2015

After exploring baseball-inspired baby names for Nameberry in October, I took a look at NFL names in my latest post. There are nearly 1,700 active players in the league, so it took a while to comb through the data. But man, there are some truly amazing picks in there.

I've always thought there was a certain formula to a great NFL name, which I describe in the piece:

An unusual, multisyllabic first name

A shorter surname that’s ideally a common name or word

A mixture of panache and gravitas

Some of my all-time favorites that fit these guidelines: Orlando Pace, Cornelius Bennett and Plaxico Burress. (Plaxico, whose appellation means peaceful, might not have helped the name by shooting himself in the leg during a nightclub incident.). . .

Friday, January 23, 2015

New York Post writer Mackenzie Dawson is catching flak for a story saying you're a terrible parent if you raise your baby in Manhattan.

“New York, New York, it’s a helluva town for babies,” said no one ever in the history of New Amsterdam, which is why my husband and I packed up our bags and moved to Westchester when our son was 5 months old. . . . I maintain that while Manhattan is one of the most fantastic places on Earth in general, it is also one of the worst, most annoying places ever for children under the age of 2.

She decries the public transit, the "manic energy," the competition and the fact that someone is always walking behind you (and wishing you'd go faster).

First of all, how does a woman of child-bearing age have the first name Mackenzie? Based on the Social Security database, that's a 12-year-old's name. Her parents must have been way ahead of the curve. (Mackenzie Phillips is in her 50s, but Mackenzie was actually her middle name.) Anyway, I digress...

Dawson makes some valid points, but in many ways the city is better for kids under 2. When babies are small, you can tote them everywhere in a Baby Bjorn and they sleep much of the time — even if you stop for a meal at a bustling restaurant. That's not possible when they get older.

When we lived in the hardscrabble alleyways of SoMa, we had a great time with Elliot as a baby. By the time he got past age 2, we felt like we needed to move. Mostly, it was because another baby was coming and our apartment was getting cramped. But it didn't help that Elliot began asking questions about the random man pleasuring himself at the bus stop. (Infants don't notice these things!)

Now we live in Manhattan, and since our third child was born in the borough, I feel like I have some authority on the topic of raising a baby here. (Yes, we live on Roosevelt Island — aka "Little Manhattan" — but just bear with me.)

Dawson is right about the transit. When you have to push a stroller around the city, you basically become a disabled person. You have to study the MTA maps to see which stations have the little wheelchairs next to them (denoting an elevator in the station).

Guess what? Not many of them do.

She also complains that you can't take a cab because it means lugging around a child seat. Here, she's a little off-base. In an exemption to safety rules, the law permits you to take your baby in a taxi without a special car seat. (Now, one could argue that no competent parent would do this, but it's well within your legal rights.)

As for your living situation: I think you really have to live in an elevator building to make Manhattan work. Hauling kids and/or a stroller up and down the steps of a walk-up doesn't seem feasible, and there aren't a whole lot of other options.

But again, raising kids in the city seems to get harder when they reach a certain age.

Lugging a stroller around is bad, but having them walk on their own is far, far worse. You have to constantly goad, cajole and scream at them or they'll stop every three feet to pick up something disgusting off the ground.

This is not something suburban families need to worry about. They just strap the kids into the car and go.

Does that mean I'd like to move out of the city? Not in the foreseeable future. But I also don't think Manhattan is anti-baby. I just think it's anti-crybaby.

Wednesday, January 21, 2015

When Elliot was a baby, he would continually escape from his crib. In fact, he would try to escape from nearly everything: baby gates, sleep sacks...gravity. He once climbed to the highest point of the couch and leaped into space — only to crash headfirst into the tile floor below. (Is it any wonder the doctors had to do so many back-of-the-leg tests back then?)

We were living in a quirky San Francisco home, which had about as much space as our current apartment but spread over four levels. Elliot would escape from his crib on the fourth floor and climb down the stairs, leaping over any obstacles, to our bedroom on the second level. He was always delighted with himself. We were terrified.

This is something every parent experiences sooner or later: My God, I can't contain this monster.

Fortunately, Alice was nothing like that. She is spirited in her own way, sure, but Alice never once tried to get out of her crib. And she generally seemed to have a better sense of self-preservation. In fact, she pleaded to be put back in her crib long after she graduated to a toddler bed.

I assumed that girls were just a bit more cautious — and wiser — than boys.

That may be true, but now we have Lucy and she is a crib escaper — just like her brother. That means we're going to have to get her a toddler bed. (I suggested putting one of those tent things on top of the crib, but apparently they're dangerous.)

For Sui, this apparent limitation is a means of finding a different – and equally valid – method of creating sculpture. In this way, the artist brings together traditions of Chinese aesthetics and Western modernism, both of which share an interest in exploring the essential nature of materials and the effects of chance.

I liked the work, but the "equally valid" bit felt a little forced. If art created while blindfolded is equally valid to everything else, than why bother using our eyes at all?

Then again, the Ninth Symphony was created without the benefit of hearing, and it is certainly "equally valid" (insomuch as it's considered the greatest piece of music ever created).

Sunday, January 18, 2015

Elliot has gotten into GarageBand lately, and it's a testament to Apple (and Steve Jobs' message of simplicity and elegance) that a 6-year-old can become fairly proficient at producing music with the software.

Here is a track he created entirely by sampling his sister's voice. It's creepy, but kind of beautiful. (For no discernible reason, Alice asked that the song be called "Super PJ.")

Later, Elliot heard the alarm I was using for my thrice-a-day antibiotics (I had dental surgery last week) and felt he could do better. This is what he produced.

On one hand, I'd like to think "Dads alrem" (Dad's alarm) is the start of a promising music career for Elliot. Then I remember that Pharrell only made $2,700 from "Happy" getting played on Pandora 43 million times.

Monday, January 12, 2015

I came across this Cheerios commercial called "This is #HowToDad," which appealed to me on multiple levels.

First of all, I've probably consumed more Cheerios than any other food in my lifetime — as a child, then as a 20-something guy who could barely use a kitchen, and finally as a dad.

I also identify with the father in the video. I mean, that's my life. Since I started composing this blog post, I've been pulled away to find a child's yaya and called upon to put hydrocortisone on two different kids' rashes.

Even so, I wonder about this attempt to target dads. For years, cereal companies exclusively went after mothers. The old slogan for Kix is: "Kids love Kix for what Kix has got. Moms love Kix for what Kix has not." No one gives a crap what dads think.

I guess times are changing. I did do the grocery shopping for the family twice over the weekend. (In fairness, it was because I neglected to buy the necessary items the first time.) But I'm still not sure I have much sway in terms of what brands/products we purchase in this home.

Maybe Cheerios is just hedging its bets with this campaign. They're promoting it with their Twitter account, but it's only aired on national television twice. So I guess it's a low-cost strategy.

Regardless, any commercial that begins with a horse head in the bed has my support.

Saturday, January 10, 2015

The Roosevelt Islander blog, a great source for local content, posted this clip earlier in the week. The video depicts a time when the Statue of Liberty was a mere 65 years old (barely eligible for retirement, which no doubt she would eagerly accept since she's French).

There's also a brief view of what is now Roosevelt Island, then Welfare Island.

As a relative newcomer to New York, I was surprised to see an elevated subway in Manhattan. The Third Avenue El, which appears to be going strong in the video, was phased out in the early 1950s.

The lack of traffic is striking — especially when you consider that the population of Manhattan was still significantly larger in 1949 than it is today (the total New York population was smaller, though).

Seeing pedestrians cross Fifth Avenue and other thoroughfares with no crosswalks or streetlights is quite something.

Another revelation: The Central Park Zoo was free! But the sea lions were still a main attraction. (As I said when we first moved from California, I was surprised that something regarded as borderline vermin on the West Coast is held in such high esteem here.)

The video spends a fair bit of time on the novelty of the Central Park horse carriages. Even then, they were regarded as an anachronism.

Now that they may soon be banned altogether, it was interesting to get a statistic on how many of them existed in 1949.

Although the sight of a horse on the busy streets of Manhattan become rarer from year to year, there are still about 20,000 of them serving mankind in New York City.

Thursday, January 08, 2015

Back in 2012, I was amused to see Roosevelt Island get a cameo in "The Dark Knight Rises." It was meant to be part of Gotham, not New York City, and the film digitally altered the surrounding areas to remove part of Queens and the entirety of the Bronx.

Well, Roosevelt Island is once again serving as the backdrop for Gotham. This time they're shooting scenes for the show "Gotham," which is set in the days before Bruce Wayne becomes Batman. The Roosevelt Islander blog has the story.

"Gotham" director Jeffrey Hunt has been posting Instragrams about the all-night shoot, which is unfortunately occurring during 17 degree weather.

Sunday, January 04, 2015

After last year's blizzard-filled winter, this season has been a bit of a letdown. There hasn't really been any significant snow, despite a fair bit of cold weather.

In my book, snow is one of the best things about living in New York. It obscures the city's blemishes and transforms the metropolis into a gleaming powdery paradise. And unlike people who live in the suburbs, we don't have to shovel it! (That may be the best part, actually.)

So we were pretty excited yesterday when we thought we were going to get some accumulation. But despite the white stuff coming down pretty hard for a while, it just turned into a slushy mess.

That didn't stop us from going outside to attempt a snowball fight.

The excursion ended abruptly when Alice reached into a pile of not-so-frozen dog poop. (For better or worse, I didn't capture this on film.)

Oh well, at least the kids made some memories (even if it was just of their dad being overly enthusiastic about something lame).

Saturday, January 03, 2015

The coming of the New Year forces us all to reflect on the passage of time. So it seems appropriate to share this clip I found of Santa Cruz, my hometown, from the 1930s.

As with the Nostalgia Train, it provides an intriguing glimpse into that era. The Boardwalk, wharf and beaches don't look drastically different, though. The changes are most evident in the cars that people drove, the clothes they wore and how white they all were. (I'm not sure how diverse the city was in that era, but it was a fairly small town. In the 1930s, Santa Cruz only had about 15,000 residents — a quarter of its current size.)

The water looked like it was still quite bracing, judging by how eager the swimmers are to get out of it.

I didn't expect to see the "Safety First" sign on the Giant Dipper roller coast, since I imagined that people in the 1930s lived in a perpetual death trap (and liked it that way).

Thursday, January 01, 2015

As promised, we used Netflix's New Year's Eve countdown last night, duping a group of six kids into thinking 8 p.m. was midnight. (I'm not sure the older children were fooled, but they went along with it.)

Unfortunately, our Roku box wasn't working, so we had to put the countdown on the laptop rather than the TV. As you can see, it wasn't quite so spectacular that way.

(Our party's only similarity with the Times Square festivities is attendees of both events were wearing diapers.)

Luckily, the kids are really good are making a lot of noise on their own.